Parts of the first plane taken to Antarctica have been found by an Australian team of researchers. The damaged aircraft was taken to Antarctica during a 1911 to 1914 expedition led by polar explorer Douglas Mawson, who intended to use it to tow gear on the ice.  This article has a photo of the recovered parts of the 100-year-old plane.    And you can see those parts in situ at Discovery News.

Here’s a discussion of other technological developments from 100 years ago.  

In a new translation of a 3,700-year-old Babylonian, cuneiform clay tablet, “Noah’s Ark” is described as a round, bitumen-covered reed vessel. “The ark didn’t have to go anywhere, it just had to float, and the instructions are for a type of craft which they knew very well. It’s still sometimes used in Iran and Iraq today,” said Irving Finkel of the British Museum.  

Intrepid archaeological travelers are venturing into Iraqi Kurdistan, which has been “relatively untouched by the war and insurgency,” according to Lonely Planet travel guide author César G. Soriano.   

In Egypt, a 2,500-year-old tomb has been unearthed at Saqqara. It had been looted in the fifth century A.D.   There’s a bit more information on the tomb in The Sydney Morning Herald.   

Ground-penetrating radar has detected what could be a grain mill owned by Revolutionary War leader George Rogers Clark, in Clarksville, Indiana. Two American Indian villages also sit on the land, located near the Ohio River.  

The skeleton of a horse, still wearing Western tack, has been found in a state park in northern California. Archaeologist Breck Parkman thinks the remains date to the 1970s, and he is trying to figure out what happened. “It’s a really interesting mystery,” he said.

 “Elements of the nation’s heritage are being neglected and forgotten in thousands of boxes that contain millions of objects neither identified nor accounted for,” according to a new report by the inspector general of the U.S. Department of the Interior. The National Park Service alone has a backlog of an estimated 60 million items, and five of the seven Bureau of Indian Affairs facilities “were unable to provide a current inventory listing of the objects in their collections.” The report concluded that poor management, and a lack of manpower and money, caused the problems.

Archaeologists have recovered more than 2,000 artifacts made of bronze, iron, porcelain, bone, and shell from a 2,500-year-old tomb in central Vietnam.  

Circular basins cut into a granite terrace located near a salty lake and two saltwater streams in California were probably used by the Miwok people to process salt for trade. They would have been able to produce about three tons of salt a year, “a large and valuable surplus to trade with other tribes – an early example of commerce by hunter-gatherer people,” said geologist James G. Moore.  

Reburial has been planned for Australian and British soldiers who were killed during the World War I Battle of Frommelles. The men had been buried in mass graves in northern France by German troops.   

Mark Holbrook of the Ohio Historical Society says that SunCoke Energy, Inc., has “complied with all of the procedures” that would make the prehistoric American Indian site, discovered during the construction of a new plant, eligible for the National Historic Preservation registry.   

Here’s more information on the badly decayed molar discovered in the attic of the Boleyn family estate in England. Believe it or not, the tooth will go on display in February.

Happy New Year! The news will return on Monday, January 4.